Ex­hibit with six lo­cal artists at Casa

Casa is pre­sent­ing six new ex­hi­bi­tions from six lo­cal artists who have fo­cused on forms of his­tory from their own per­spec­tive and in a unique way.

The ex­hibits open today and show­case work from artists, David Hof­fos, Katie Bruce, An­ge­line Si­mon, An­neli Janssens, Gene Brack and John Mac­Don­ald.

A lo­cal artist and print maker, Bruce has been prac­tis­ing her craft for eight years. Her ex­hibit, called “Un­said Un­seen,” will fea­ture per­sonal let­ters she has writ­ten to peo­ple but has never shown to them. The let­ters are sen­ti­men­tal to Bruce, and her in­spi­ra­tion for the project was to get those con­ver­sa­tions out on pa­per as a ther­a­peu­tic re­lease for her.

She said they are to be a gen­tle con­fronta­tion of work, con­fess­ing words that are left un­said, and things that are meant to be read but aren’t. The pa­pers are folded, ma­nip­u­lated and framed to not clearly re­veal what they are about, leav­ing a sense of mys­tery be­hind the ex­hibit.

“The in­tended re­cip­i­ent of those words isn’t nec­es­sar­ily some­one that’s ever go­ing to be see­ing these let­ters,” said Bruce. “The idea of re­fus­ing those words to a viewer who maybe thinks they’re en­ti­tled to some ca­pac­ity to that in­ti­macy of read­ing what an­other per­son has writ­ten for some­body else.”

Si­mon will have hand-cut historical pho­tos of Leth­bridge’s ar­chi­tec­ture as­sem­bled in 3D form to give the images more life for the viewer.

She cre­ated a com­bi­na­tion of present-day pho­tos that were taken by her and gath­ered pho­tos from the Galt Mu­seum & Archives to bring a re­flec­tion from the past dat­ing to the late 1800s and mid 1900s.

She wanted to elim­i­nate any­thing dis­tract­ing such as signs and cur­rent build­ing names be­cause she wanted to fo­cus on the ar­chi­tec­ture and have her work rep­re­sent a re­flec­tion of the past and present.

“I think it’s mean­ing­ful be­cause this is like home to me. Leth­bridge is home and this is my re­flec­tion of that,” said Si­mon.

Casa cu­ra­tor Darcy Lo­gan thought it would be in­ter­est­ing to build the main floor ex­hi­bi­tions the­mat­i­cally, in a sense that they all deal with the re­pro­duc­tion of images, and the ma­nip­u­la­tion of images by hand.

He hopes au­di­ences will be en­gaged on an aes­thetic level where they can re­flect on the qual­ity of work that is be­ing pro­duced by lo­cal artists.

“I think it’s im­por­tant for the com­mu­nity to come out and help cel­e­brate what the peo­ple pro­duce in cul­ture here in the com­mu­nity, and what they’re ca­pa­ble of,” said Lo­gan. The ex­hibit will run un­til Feb. 16. Mean­while ev­ery Jan­uary artists are rec­og­nized through the Month of the Artist in Al­berta. This month-long cel­e­bra­tion val­ues the con­tri­bu­tions artists make to Al­berta so­cially and eco­nom­i­cally.

Al­berta has be­come the first prov­ince to ded­i­cate a month to artists.

The Month of the Artist is one way the Gov­ern­ment of Al­berta is help­ing to raise aware­ness about Al­berta’s artists and to cel­e­brate their ac­com­plish­ments.

To find out more in­for­ma­tion about artists’ events and how to par­tic­i­pate, visit